Simple Truths
by GhyllWyne
Summary: "It's raining, I'm crying. Sherlock is dying" My take on what happens after John finds Sherlock with a bullet in his chest in Magnusson's flat. Missing scenes from "His Last Vow".


Simple Truths by GhyllWyne

Summary: _"It's raining, I'm crying. Sherlock is dying."_ My take on what happens after John finds Sherlock with a bullet in his chest in Magnusson's flat. Missing scenes from "His Final Vow".

John reached the top landing and saw a door standing half open. He moved quietly up to it and listened. If Sherlock and Magnusson were inside, they weren't talking. He peeked around the jamb and immediately spotted Sherlock flat on his back a few steps inside, apparently unconscious. Crumpled on the floor at the opposite side of the room, Magnusson looked to be just coming round himself. Whatever had happened apparently took them both down.

He stepped inside and went directly to Sherlock. Magnusson was sitting up now, but Sherlock hadn't even twitched an eyelid. John knelt next to him and gave his cheek a few light slaps. "Sherlock. Sherlock, can you hear me?" Getting no reaction whatever, he looked over at Magnusson. "What happened?"

Magnusson picked up his spectacles from the floor and placed them on his face with noticeably trembling hands. "He got shot."

The words hit him like a physical blow. "Who shot him?" He pressed his fingers to Sherlock's carotid and found a pulse. It was rapid and erratic, but there. When he flipped back the folds of his coat and found the bright splash of blood, his whispered 'Oh my God' was a prayer. The size of the entrance wound said small caliber, but the internal structures that John knew lay in the bullet's path held devastating possibilities. A mere centimeter difference in any direction could have killed him outright, so luck was working for them, but there was no safe place for a bullet in the chest. He wasn't lying in a pool of blood, which probably meant there was no exit wound, but John could not risk moving him to find out, and it wasn't good news in any case. Depending on the type of ammunition, there could be massive damage from a projectile designed to expand inside the body. Or it may have been the type that fragmented, wreaking havoc far worse than a simple through-and-through wound would have done. The amount of blood around the wound was minimal, but it was clearly arterial, and there was nothing John could do to stop what he knew had to be going on inside. He dug the phone from his pocket and pressed '999'.

"Sherlock? Sherlock, can you hear me?" There was still no response, and now his breathing was becoming labored.

"Emergency, which service do you require?"

"I have a gunshot victim with a critical chest wound." He gave the operator the address, tamping down the panic he heard in his own voice.

"Is the shooter still on the premises?"

He hadn't even considered that they might still be in danger. "No, I don't think so. Please, this is an emergency."

"Yes, sir. Help is on the way. Is the victim breathing? I can guide you through the steps to-"

"I'm a doctor," he shouted. His friend was dying in front of him while this idiot woman plodded through her standard list of 'questions to ask the caller when...'. "He's breathing, but he won't be for long if you don't get someone here NOW!" He closed the phone and dropped it on the carpet. He knew it would be at least eight minutes before the medics could reach them, add another ten to the nearest hospital emergency. How much time did Sherlock have left?

"How long ago did this happen?" he barked at Magnusson who was now sitting cross-legged on the carpet, calmly observing them.

The man shrugged and glanced his wristwatch. "I was unconscious myself, but perhaps five minutes? It looks like a rather serious wound." Magnusson followed that comment with a faint smirk.

*_If you did this to him, I swear to Christ, I will kill you with my bare hands_.* The image of his fingers crushing Magnusson's throat flared in his mind, as vivid as a memory.

The sudden sound of hurried footsteps and multiple voices coming up the stairs, far too soon to be the ambulance, made John turn to face this new threat. Impossibly, it was the medics. He moved quickly out of the way to let them work, then strode straight for Magnusson to check for a weapon.

"I didn't shoot him," Magnusson said blandly, his arms extended casually to be searched. "I have no weapon."

John crouched to pat him down, but he could see now that there was nowhere for Magnusson to conceal a gun. "Who shot him?"

"I don't know," Magnusson replied, but he wasn't looking at John. He was watching the medics work, his expression unreadable.

Suddenly John could see what Sherlock had tried to describe. *_Have you ever gone to the aquarium, John? Watched the sharks float past the glass with those flat, dead eyes? That's Magnusson_.* Revulsion sent a chill down his back.

"If you had anything to do with this, we will be talking again." It was clearly a threat, but Magnusson just nodded absently and kept his gaze on Sherlock.

The medics had started an intravenous line and placed an oxygen mask over his face, but Sherlock's condition had deteriorated in just the few moments John had been away from his side. His naturally fair skin had gone ashen, and the audible beeps from the portable monitor indicated a heart that was struggling and about to fail.

"He's going to arrest," John shouted at the men who were already responding.

"We have to move him now," one of them said. They were as gentle as circumstances permitted, but he was dead weight, his long limbs and yards of coat fabric making him hard to lift. By the time they had him securely strapped in and started down the stairs, there was a crew of policemen heading up towards them.

John had expected the police who routinely responded to any call involving a gunshot victim, but seeing Greg Lestrade with them was a surprise.

"Jesus, John. What happened?"

"He's been shot. I have to go." John pointed back toward the door of the flat. "Magnusson's up there. Ask him." And he raced after the men who held his friend's life literally in their hands.

He caught up with them as the lift doors were closing, reached in and pushed them open.

"There's really no room. We-", one of the medics began, but John was already in the lift and the doors were closing behind him.

"He's my friend, and I'm coming with you."

John talked to Sherlock all the way to the ambulance, but he was completely unresponsive. This depth of unconsciousness just didn't make sense with a chest wound. A head injury would account for it, but he didn't seem to have one. He had to be in a tremendous amount of pain, and yet there was no indication that he was even aware of it.

They had barely gotten the gurney secured inside the ambulance when Sherlock's heart rate accelerated wildly and threatened arrest once again. For an endless two minutes, they kept the defibrillator charged and paddles at the ready.

One of the medics called up to the driver, "We can't wait for him to stabilize. Go!"

As the ambulance began to move, John grabbed Sherlock's hand and leaned as close as he could without blocking the poised paddles, "Sherlock, we're losing you. Sherlock!" And as suddenly as it had started, the arrhythmia settled back down to near normal.

The medic with the paddles relaxed his posture and gave John an odd look. "You have to teach me that trick."

It was nine minutes before they reached the hospital. John kept hold of Sherlock's hand as the gurney was removed from the ambulance and rushed through to the trauma center entrance inside. He was only mildly surprised to find Mycroft there waiting for them.

"Let them take care of him, John." Mycroft gripped his arm and held him back. "The best trauma surgeon in the city is already here."

The gurney disappeared through the doors, and Mycroft tightened his hold. "You need to tell me what happened."

The critical task of getting Sherlock here alive had kept John from feeling the effects of shock and adrenaline, but there was nothing to hold them back now. Mycroft's grip on his arm changed from restraint to support as John's knees began to buckle with the onslaught of reaction. He allowed himself to be steered to a nearby row of plastic chairs. Mycroft sat down next to him.

"John, how badly is he hurt?"

John's focus was on the trauma room doors. He could hear the muffled, urgent voices, but was unable to make out what they were saying. He should to be in there with him, not sitting uselessly in the lobby.

"How badly is he hurt?" Mycroft repeated. He still had hold of John's arm, and he underscored the question this time with a tug to make John face him.

There was no point sugar coating it, John decided. Not for Mycroft. "Small caliber gunshot wound in the right chest about midline" he touched the same place on his own chest. "There's undoubtedly significant internal hemorrhage. He was unconscious when I found him and hasn't come around at all. His heart rate is dangerously unstable. He had two near-arrests." John took a shaky breath. "He's dying, Mycroft, unless they can get him into surgery in time to stop it."

Mycroft eyes closed for a few seconds as he absorbed the information, and then he fixed John with that famous icy glare. "What were you doing in Magnusson's office?"

"I don't know." It was the truth.

"Do you have any idea of the problems you've both just created?"

John pulled free of Mycroft's hand, and turned to face him squarely. "You know what? Damn your problems. How's this for a solution? You stand an excellent chance of never again having to deal with Sherlock *or* any problems he might cause, because there's at least an even chance that he won't survive surgery." He wanted to see a crack in that infuriatingly inscrutable exterior. "I know you keep him under surveillance. Why didn't you stop him, if this was going to be such a problem? You must have known exactly where we-" He stopped as realization dawned. "*You* called the ambulance."

Mycroft looked mildly pleased. "Very good, John. Yes, I knew the moment he was shot. Unfortunately, what I didn't know was that you weren't actually with him. When there was no call to emergency from your phone, I contacted them myself."

"You knew he'd been shot, but you waited for *me* to call for help?" The sheer callousness was appalling, even for Mycroft. "How did you know I was even alive to make a call? We could both have been shot."

"There are some questions better left unasked. Suffice it to say that I knew you were not shot." He patted his vest pocket and stood. "Now if you will excuse me, I have a few calls to make."

Debating Mycroft Holmes was as pointless as trying to win an argument with his brother, and watching the two of them go at each other was exhausting, but right now John would trade a dozen years of his own life to do exactly that.

John did not understand his own reactions tonight, let alone Mycroft's. He had tended critically wounded soldiers on the battlefield with gunfire pinging off rocks an arm's reach away without a trace of the panic he'd felt tonight. In the end, it didn't matter how Mycroft had known to send help. It was the only reason Sherlock was still alive.

"You came in the ambulance with Sherlock Holmes?"

He looked up to find a woman in burgundy scrubs standing next to his chair, clipboard in hand and a practiced look of empathy on her face. He got to his feet and glanced around for Mycroft. "Yes, has something happened? Can I see him?" He started for the trauma center doors without waiting for her response, but she stepped in front of him.

"We've just now sent him up to surgery. It's going to be a long wait, I'm afraid. If you can give me a mobile number to contact you when we-"

John cut her off. "Excuse me, but I asked how he is. You can tell me the truth. I'm a doctor."

She studied him calmly. "Then you are familiar with the protocols. There is nothing more I can tell you until your friend comes out of surgery. His condition is extremely critical, but I think you know that better than I do."

He knew all too well, but hearing it stated so clinically made it hard to breathe for a moment.

"He is in excellent hands," she continued, "and we will call you as soon as there is word. The best thing you can do is to go home and rest."

He crossed his arms and leaned into her space. "I'm not leaving."

Mycroft returned at that moment and stood next to John. "Neither of us is leaving," he told her in a voice that left no room for debate, "until my brother is out of danger."

It was nearly four hours before Sherlock was moved to intensive care where John was finally allowed to see him. There was a chair for him, but he wasn't ready to sit quite yet. Instead, he stood at the foot of the bed and just watched his friend breathe. It calmed him after awhile, and he pulled the chair up next to the bed and sat.

"Sherlock, you have to quit doing this to me. It's stopped being funny."

The beeps from the heart monitor abruptly increased for a few seconds, and then slowed again. John looked closely at Sherlock's face. It must have been coincidence, but who knew with Sherlock Holmes?

"I know you can hear me, Sherlock. Do you want to know how? I once sat like this with a soldier I had treated in the field for a serious head wound. We had to wait for transport in a bombed-out ruin. I kept talking to him because there was nothing else I could do. He was unconscious, and I wanted to keep him from slipping any deeper into coma. He didn't respond at the time, but later after he recovered, he told me what I'd talked about. It was the first time I'd seen that happen."

He reached over and took Sherlock's hand. Absent the crisis they'd been in the midst of earlier, it felt more than a little awkward, and he was fairly certain he'd never get away with it if the hand's owner were conscious. "I'm looking for a response, Sherlock. You need to let me know you're in there." He gave the long fingers a gentle squeeze. There was no change in the monitor this time, and Sherlock's body remained as motionless as a wax figure, but for the steady rise and fall of his chest.

"If I thought it would work, I'd try making you feel guilty for putting me through this again. Two years, Sherlock. You let me believe you were dead for two bloody years. I still can't wrap my head around that. You stood there and watched me at your grave, begging a dead man to-" Even now, the memory choked his voice to a whisper, and he had to stop for a moment. "I've never felt like that before in my life, and I never want to go through it again. If I hadn't met Mary, I-"

Sherlock's fingers closed around John's hand with a strength that startled him. He reached up with his free hand and touched Sherlock's face to turn it toward him. "Sherlock, can you hear me? Sherlock? It's John. Look at me."

But the fingers went slack once more, and John sat back in his chair. "That was a good trick. I dare you to do it again."

"He didn't know how much he was going to hurt you, John, but I did."

John turned to see Mycroft standing in the doorway. "What are you talking about?"

Mycroft came into the room and walked to the foot of the bed where John had stood earlier. He rested his hands on the footboard and kept his gaze on his brother as he spoke. "I've been talking with the doctors, and it's finally dawned on me that he may actually die."

"What did they tell you. Has something changed?"

Mycroft looked at him for a moment, then turned back to Sherlock. "Nothing has changed. It's just suddenly hit me, I suppose."

"Mycroft, it's much too soon to give up."

He took a deep breath. "I find myself experiencing an unfamiliar sense of regret on a couple of fronts, both of which are in this room." He turned to John. "I wonder if I might have a few moments alone with my brother?"

John had never heard anything like entreaty in Mycroft's voice before. That it was so clearly there now was an unneeded reminder of how dire the situation had become.

"John?"

"Yes, of course." He gently released Sherlock's hand and stood up. When Mycroft stepped around him to take his place next to Sherlock's bed, John caught a whiff of cigarette smoke. It was confirmation that Mycroft's serene demeanor was a facade. He was as terrified as John. "I'll be just outside."

Mycroft waited until the door closed behind John Watson before he turned to his brother. "Sherlock, I owe you an apology. I badly misjudged a situation some months ago, and you are paying for that mistake." He watched his brother for a reaction before he continued. "I had half-expected an apology from me would be shocking enough to wake you, but that's not why I offered it. I need to ask two favors of you. The first is that you employ that ferocious will of yours to fight your way back from this. You have no reason to believe it, but your loss would break my heart." He paused for control, surprised at how finally saying the words affected him. "The second favor is that you refrain from taking any action against the person who shot you until you and I can talk it over. What she did was the inevitable result of events I set in motion. It's my fault that you're hurt, and I don't think I can live with it if you don't recover." Mycroft sat back in the chair and watched his brother sleep.

John was leaning against the wall across from Sherlock's room, having just refused the third offer of a chair, when Mycroft opened the door.

"Please come in." He said it so casually that he could have been inviting a guest in for tea.

John checked the monitors as soon as he entered the room to satisfy himself that no crisis was imminent.

"You requested a chair, sir?" A young man was at the door, chair in hand.

Offer number four. "No, thank you. I-"John began, but Mycroft interrupted him.

"Yes, I did," Mycroft replied with the same irritating calm. To John, he said, "We need to talk. Please have a seat."

John took the chair nearest the bed. Mycroft placed the other facing him and sat down. "I wasn't entirely honest with you earlier when you asked what his doctors told me."

"There's a shock."

"Sherlock was in full cardiac arrest for 23 minutes before surgery began."

"How could you not- Why didn't they come out and-" The news made Sherlock's deep unconsciousness (coma, John, say it) even more alarming. He took a breath and tried again. "How could you not tell me this? What else are you leaving out, or do I have to track the surgeon down myself?" He had no legal standing to demand information because he wasn't a relative, but he'd damn well try.

"They had given up after 20 minutes of continuous resuscitation efforts and were about to pronounce him dead. Three minutes after all attempts were suspended, his heart began beating again. The surgeon said it was unique in his experience. I gather, he's already writing an article for the Lancet."

If anyone could pull off a trick like that, it would be Sherlock. Of that, John had no doubt. But how? "That's not possible."

"John, you of all people know better than to call anything impossible when it involves my brother."

Mycroft needed a dose of reality. "Mycroft, it might sound like good news, but there could be damage to his heart, not to mention his brain, from such an extended arrest. Did the surgeon say anything about that?"

"Yes, but he doesn't know this man the way we do, does he?"

"Mycroft, not even Sherlock can will away the consequences of brain cells deprived of oxygen for that long." He turned slightly in the chair and took Sherlock's hand, all traces of self-consciousness erased by this potentially disastrous news.

"I didn't tell you this to upset you. You're missing the point. I know my brother, and I know how little he values his own life. He would not have fought like that six years ago. John, he came back for *you*."

John had to clear his throat twice before he could get the words out. "You said when you first came in that he didn't know he was going to hurt me, but you did. What did you mean?"

"We orchestrated the ruse of his suicide so he could be sent on a deep undercover assignment of the highest priority. When the plans were formulated, he made only one demand, and that was my solemn word that you would be protected while he was away. John, my brother does not lack the ability to love. He simply can't believe that anyone could love him in return. He wanted you to witness his suicide so you would never doubt that he was dead. He believed that he could convince you that he was a fraud, and that the knowledge would make you despise him. It was his way of sparing you any pain."

It explained so much. The tearful confession just before he threw himself from the roof had been an act meant to erase John's pain. Utter selflessness that John had interpreted as the exact opposite. "He may not have known what I was going through, but you did. Why couldn't you trust me with the truth?"

Mycroft sighed. "This, I'm afraid, is the difficult part. I needed you to grieve, John, to sell the lie."

John had never imagined that he could feel such murderous rage toward another human being. But then, Mycroft Holmes could not be human because no human being could possibly be this heartless. "I must have exceeded your wildest expectations." He was surprised to find his voice deadly calm.

"You did. I misjudged you, John. I know what you must think of me, but I failed to recognize the extent of the damage until it was too late. I can't say that it would have changed my decision, but-"

"Damage? You call what you did to me *damage*?" He felt every muscle in his body clench like a fist, and he was ready to launch himself at Mycroft when he realized that not only was he squeezing Sherlock's hand too hard, Sherlock was squeezing back. He was on his feet before he realized he was moving. "Sherlock? It's John, Sherlock. Can you hear me?"

Mycroft was suddenly on the opposite side of the bed then, holding Sherlock's left hand. It was the first time John had seen them touch without anger.

Sherlock was still gripping John's hand. "Sherlock, look at me. Open your eyes."

And suddenly, he did just that. He looked directly at John, and he was clearly trying to speak. "Don't try to talk. Just take it slow." John heard the giddy relief in his own voice. "Are you in any pain?"

The answer to that question became obvious a moment later when his eyes opened wide and his grip on John's hand became painfully strong. John reached across to the morphine drip and increased the dose. "It will ease up in a moment, just hold on."

His grip relaxed a few seconds later as the morphine began to work. His eyes remained fixed on John, and he kept trying to speak.

"What is it, Sherlock? What do you need?"

The effort he was making to speak was draining what little strength he had, and John was about to increase the morphine again, just to make him calm down.

"Mary..."

"Sherlock, don't speak." It was Mycroft, and he had turned his brother's face toward him. Their gazes locked on one another.

Something seemed to pass between them, but John couldn't be certain. All he cared about was that Sherlock was awake.

"He's asleep now," Mycroft said quietly.

His rage at Mycroft temporarily smothered by relief, he said, "I have to call my wife. Will you stay with him until I get back?"

"Of course."

John called her from a payphone by the lifts, and she insisted on coming to the hospital. When he saw her coming across the lobby a short time later, he couldn't wait to say the words out loud.

"He's just bloody woken up! He's pulled through!"

"Really? That's wonderful! Oh, John, I'm so glad for you."

He had to tell her the best part. "And you, Mrs. Watson, are in trouble."

"Me? Why?"

"His first word when he woke up? 'Mary'."

He hugged her, probably too hard, but she didn't seem to mind. The two people he loved most in this world were alive and well, and with him. Not even Mycroft Holmes could tarnish that simple, perfect truth.

Author's notes - This is the first of several missing scenes I want to explore from this episode. I chose this one because there seemed to be SO many possibilities. I hope you liked where I took them.-GhyllWyne 25 Aug 2014

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